"Why would anyone read a blog about an allotment?" said my friend Karl. This was in January 2006 and I had offered to help my mate out with his slightly overgrown looking plot. I took my first photos of the plot and started blogging about it. I could sense Karl's eyes rolling.

Karl taught me everything I know about running an allotment and it's mostly because of him that I still do it. There's nothing enjoyable about freezing your fingers off digging mud on a cold January weekend but you savour every second that you sit in the sun eating fresh strawberries in the summer evenings.

Strawberries

Karl introduced me to broad beans first and the importance of covering plants with fleece in the winter. I thought it was a bit weird to give your beans a bed with a cover but it does work and keeps the ground that extra bit warmer over winter. We planted potatoes in stacked tyres plus the usual onions, garlic, carrots and runner beans which most new gardeners start with. We both loved to try more uncommon allotment produce and in our first two years we experimented with yellow courgettes, pink banana squashes and aubergines. Delicious.

Peas

Everything is very much trial and error when you run an allotment and you learn about perennial weeds pretty quickly too. Most allotments have them and are an endurance test to any new enthusiastic gardener. Bind weed strangles plants like a python and can grow from just the tiniest root. Mare's Tail looks like its name and and has roots that can go down several feet. You will be lucky to get rid of it permanently. Weeds can really test your patience! I have caught even the most revered gardeners sheepishly spraying Round-Up around their trees hoping that no-one will notice.

Mangetout

People love the idea of growing organic food but if you find in your first year that all your hard work serves as a feast for the nearest slug family then you can become quite disheartened and then mercilessly march towards Wilkinson's for slug pellets. Slugs are the stereotypical gardener's nightmare and we have tried coffee, beer, and cider traps. They are not fussy creatures and do have an overwhelming caffeine and alcohol addiction! As horrible as it sounds, picking them up by hand on a dark, wet evening and disposing of them manually works the best.

Potatoe tyres

Plotting in Cardiff

Having a plot in Cardiff, half way up an incline has its good and bad points. You get a spectacular view over the Cardiff landscape where you can see Roath Lake, the Heath Hospital and sometimes the Millennium Stadium on a clear day. Plus you get stunning sunsets. Weather wise it's not so great. When it rains (especially for several days), water can build up one side of the plot into a bog and it gets a bit tricky walking around if it is really wet. I have had my fair share of slapstick falls walking on wet boards and weed suppressing plastic!

When it's windy your greenhouse can take a severe battering too. We found two smashed glass panels on another plot that had been blown off the roof! The wind gathers a lot of momentum from the top of the hill and your greenhouse is at the mercy of any flying debris. One half of our greenhouse is glass and the other is polycarbonate.

Even though the plot is in the city, Lady Mary Allotments is a very green part of Cardiff with Roath Lake at the bottom of the road and large residential gardens surrounding the plots. It makes a good home for wildlife and we have had some surprising visitors. There is a female fox that tends to roll about on plastic sheeting in the summer and sleeps in the greenhouse. We think it is her that has been stealing swan eggs from the lake and burying them on our plot. We have also had mice that have stolen seeds from dried sunflower heads and then kindly left the seed kernels in my wellington boot with other little deposits! Toads, frogs, robins, ducks, bats and magpies also frequent the allotment throughout the year. Quite a few allotmenteers actively encourage wildlife with ponds and nesting boxes for various creatures and insects.

Cardiff allotment community

Pumkin head

There is a fantastic mixture of allotment characters on our plots. One of our neighbours is in his eighties and has had his plot for over 50 years! He remembers when all the flats at the bottom of Lake Road East were farms. Allotments are very much community driven and you get to know most people within 6 plots either side of your own. Some people bring their families, others come up to get away from them! Everyone has their own story and shared enthusiasm for gardening.

Funny carrots

Since we started working on the plot, the take up of allotments has been incredible. We were very lucky with our plot as Karl took it on before allotments became increasingly popular. Karl has recently moved to the other side of the city so it is now his previous allotment partner, Dave, and myself who now turn the land each year. Just before Autumn we have an allotment dinner where all our gardening friends get together and create a dish from either their own garden produce or the allotment which is usually complimented with some game meat from the Roath Farmers Market on Saturdays and a few bottles of wine. It is our own little late summer harvest.

Me in a wheelbarrow

When I started digging the allotment in 2006 I have blogged and photographed the plot every year as a reminder of how much we have done over the past five years. What started out as a hobby and a visual record of each year on the plot has gathered quite a bit of momentum. I am no expert gardener but I love what I do and my blog is an honest account of what any beginner gardener can expect from renting an allotment.

Nicole Rugman blogs about running her Cardiff allotment over on the Dig Issue.